"We made it, we're in the Ottawa Citizen!" Dr. Ben Barry is Dean of Fashion at Parsons School of Design in New York. When he was fourteen, Ben founded a modelling agency in his hometown of Ottawa, Canada. Realizing there was an untapped market for models of all sizes, Ben made a name for himself as an agent for models of all sizes. Ben’s agency initially supplied models for the local newspaper, which quickly became his biggest champion.

Then TEEN PEOPLE gave him a call. In March 2001, they celebrated Ben on their annual list of "20 Teens Who Will Change the World". This caught the attention of Oprah Winfrey, who featured the 18-year-old on her talk show.

As an adult, Ben shifted into a career in fashion education. He has a BA from the University of Toronto, and degrees from Cambridge University, where his PhD research demonstrated a business case for size diversity in fashion and beauty advertising.

Over the past few years, Ben has worked at Ryerson University in Toronto, where he was Chair of Fashion, and Founding Director of the Centre for Fashion Diversity and Social Change. He remains an Associate Professor of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, in the School of Fashion at Ryerson.

Ben spoke with me in the spring of 2021, from his country home west of Kingston, Ontario.

Podcast notes:

Ben is the co-founder and co-editor of Fashion Studies, an open access, academic journal, which you can find here: www.fashionstudies.ca.

Find me online: www.annasoper.ca.

This is the last episode of season two, and if you haven't heard my other interviews, please do! I would love to hear your thoughts on this project, so please get in touch, or leave a review or rating on your favourite podcast app.

Intro music (edited for length): Fog Lake, 'Roswell'. Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0): www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/ @foglake on SoundCloud

Outro music: RomanBelov on Pixabay

Teen People is recorded in Kingston/Katarokwi, the traditional territory of the Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and the Huron-Wendat.